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80% Of US Adults Are Near Poverty, Rely On Welfare, Or Are Unemployed
Zero Hedge ^ | 7-28-13 | "Tyler Durden"

Posted on 07/29/2013 2:12:25 AM PDT by RKBA Democrat

Despite consumer confidence at a six-year high, the latest AP survey of the real America shows a stunning four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, are near poverty, or rely on welfare for at least parts of their lives amid signs of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among whites about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987.

"Poverty is no longer an issue of 'them', it's an issue of 'us'," as 'the invisible poor' - lower income whites - are generally dispersed in suburbs (Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains) where more than 60% of the poor are white.

More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four - accounting for more than 41% of the nation's destitute - nearly double the number of poor blacks and as one survey respondent noted "I think it's going to get worse."

Via AP,

Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."

Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in government data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.

"It's time that America comes to understand that many of the nation's biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position," said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty.

"There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front,"

"Poverty is no longer an issue of 'them', it's an issue of 'us'," says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers.

Among the findings:

For the first time since 1975, the number of white single-mother households who were living in poverty with children surpassed or equaled black ones in the past decade, spurred by job losses and faster rates of out-of-wedlock births among whites. White single-mother families in poverty stood at nearly 1.5 million in 2011, comparable to the number for blacks. Hispanic single-mother families in poverty trailed at 1.2 million.

The share of children living in high-poverty neighborhoods — those with poverty rates of 30 percent or more — has increased to 1 in 10, putting them at higher risk of teen pregnancy or dropping out of school. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 17 percent of the child population in such neighborhoods, up from 13 percent in 2000, even though the overall proportion of white children in the U.S. has been declining.

The share of black children in high-poverty neighborhoods dropped sharply, from 43 percent to 37 percent, while the share of Latino children ticked higher, from 38 to 39 percent.

Going back to the 1980s, never have whites been so pessimistic about their futures.

All this despite Jack Lew's insistence on this morning's Meet The Press that this recovery is 'not anemic', six year highs in consumer confidence, and all-time-highs in US equity markets.

Perhaps it is worth reiterating the question that Rick Santelli asked before?


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: hopeandchange; obamanomics; poverty
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Hope and Change at work.

Link to AP story via Drudge:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/exclusive-4-5-us-face-near-poverty-no-work-0

1 posted on 07/29/2013 2:12:25 AM PDT by RKBA Democrat
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To: RKBA Democrat

Why am I not surprised?


2 posted on 07/29/2013 2:18:24 AM PDT by Ronin (Dumb, dependent and Democrat is no way to go through life - Rep. L. Gohmert, Tex)
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To: RKBA Democrat

Could it be because Obama is about payback 24 hours a day, every day?


3 posted on 07/29/2013 2:19:30 AM PDT by Truth29
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To: RKBA Democrat

As much of a doom and gloomer that I am, I find it incredible
that it can be 80 percent.
I think that America is finished, but 80 percent are already gone?
I have only one fear...my social security drying up. It is what I live on now.


4 posted on 07/29/2013 2:21:32 AM PDT by AlexW
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To: RKBA Democrat
I hope Mark Levin, with his new book, sparks a wave of resistance to that which ails us, authoritarian government.

We have the legitimate, constitutional power to turn things around without violence. It is time to use the tools our framers gave us, to go on the offense against the rat/rino/media/judicial complex that is rapidly consolidating all power and stomping out our freedoms.

5 posted on 07/29/2013 2:34:27 AM PDT by Jacquerie (To restore the 10th Amendment, repeal the 17th.)
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To: AlexW

The 80% number is lying with statistics. They define the 80% by simply saying the top 20% are the only ones not in poverty.Pardon my ignorance but does not the word poverty mean starvation? Most of those in poverty in the US are obese. They have too much to eat. Nobody starves in the US except the occasional drug addict if them.

Most of those in “poverty” in the US would be in the top 3% of the worlds wealthiest people to get there all they have to do is have a bank account with a $100.00 balance.

So I think you are right the article is a lie.

I also think you better find something other than Social Security; not because I am mean but because I think your right about that too.


6 posted on 07/29/2013 2:35:29 AM PDT by Fai Mao (Genius at Large)
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To: Ronin

My county at last Census was 96% white, 1% black, and 2% other (the other being illegals it seems).

I’m at Walmart nearly every day for something or another and rare are the times when I don’t see some young overweight baby mama with her fricking EBT card buying up all the soft drinks, chips and Ho-Hos in sight.

I cannot recall having seen one black person use an EBT card there.

Just like crack, cocaine, meth, etc. don’t care what your color is, neither does EBT/SNAP/WICs/TANF/EITC/Section 8.


7 posted on 07/29/2013 2:42:36 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: AlexW

It’s NOT. What the article says. It states that AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIFE. 80 % are close to poverty etc etc.


8 posted on 07/29/2013 2:43:30 AM PDT by Kozak ("Send them back your fierce defiance! Stamp upon the cursed alliance! To arms, to arms.....")
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To: Fai Mao

Sure about that?


9 posted on 07/29/2013 2:48:30 AM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: Jacquerie

Those powers of which you speak are moot when the combined branches of government are arrayed against freedom and personal responsibility. Each branch is totally infested with ideologues that will negate all the protections.

It used to be that basic human wrongs (e.g., segregation in Little Rock Arkansas, Alabama with Wallace, et al) were protected and corrected even though if you’d have run a poll then, it likely wouldn’t have come down on the side of right. The Law ruled.

Today, it isn’t like that. Established law does not rule; you can see the effects of that nearly every single day with the arbitrary (and illegal) orders of Obama, Holder, liberal judges, and even in Congress.

Today, Law does not rule - Tyrants do, and there isn’t a peaceful process to be rid of them that I know of.


10 posted on 07/29/2013 2:49:33 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: RKBA Democrat
Despite consumer confidence at a six-year high, the latest AP survey of the real America shows a stunning four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, are near poverty, or rely on welfare for at least parts of their lives amid signs of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Claims like this become believable when they start to hit close to home. My nephew just learned that the plant where he has been working for the past 18 years, is being shut down. There are absolutely NO jobs around that area; only more misery as power plants are being forced to close by our EPA.

More poverty in a poverty struck area that once flourished with coal mines and steel mills. How will the Democrats they continue to elect help them now?

11 posted on 07/29/2013 2:57:08 AM PDT by olezip (Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature. ~ Cicero)
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To: AlexW

If Obama ever discovers life expectancy tables broken down by race, your social security benefits will have a life expectancy of one week.


12 posted on 07/29/2013 3:06:56 AM PDT by monocle
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To: RKBA Democrat


13 posted on 07/29/2013 3:08:02 AM PDT by Iron Munro (They Old. That's Old School People. We In A New School, Our Generation)
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To: Biggirl

Yeah, fairly sure. The trick works like this. divide the population into thirds. Call the bottom third the poverty line. No matter how much that bottom third makes they will always be in poverty. This study uses that type of approach. It is based upon envy not actual starvation. It is disingenuous to say “If they didn’t have food stamps, welfare and such they’d starve” because they do have those things.

In the 1980’s women in the US spent more on cosmetics than the combined GNP of all the countries in Africa combined if you left out South Africa. I don’t think that has changed much. Does that sound like poverty? How many “poor” women wear makeup?

There is enough grain in the US turned into beer each year to feed everyone that starves in the world - or so various charities used to say. If the poor in the US are starving then why do they buy beer instead of bread? (Please note I am a beer drinker)

Let the libritards in the US move to Nigeria or India if they want to see poverty.

A last issue. Most of those in “poverty”in the US are there because of choices they themselves made. The Blacks could have made use of the education offered them. They could have chosen to not live a debauched, non-industrious life but most of them didn’t. They are poor because they decided that the things that would make them prosperous, working, learning to read and write and manner were too white. They created the Hell they are in.

That is not the case in a place like India where the poor are poor because they are in a caste that is kept poor by the higher level Hindu caste or in Nigeria by an oppressive corrupt government


14 posted on 07/29/2013 3:12:41 AM PDT by Fai Mao (Genius at Large)
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To: RKBA Democrat

Not Congress which has gotten richer from the
banks of al Qaeda and Islam against the American people.

Congress has destroyed America by support tyranny
and lawlessness as they micturated on their Oaths.


15 posted on 07/29/2013 3:14:21 AM PDT by Diogenesis
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To: AlexW

And still they are raising taxes here in Maryland and bleeding us dry, while they send money to Casa De Maryland to help the illegals.

They raised the gasoline tax ,but there is no talk of building the new Bridges that we need in Southern Maryland.
All O’Malley worries about is Annapolis and Baltimore.


16 posted on 07/29/2013 3:16:46 AM PDT by Venturer
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To: monocle

” your social security benefits will have a life expectancy of one week.”
______________________________________________
Well, maybe so, but since I am an expat, I live on a fraction of what those in the USSA have to pay. I will survive without SS, but I may have to give up my lust for wine ;)


17 posted on 07/29/2013 3:17:49 AM PDT by AlexW
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To: Truth29

> Could it be because Obama is about payback 24 hours a day, every day?

About to? He already has and he dishes it out 24/7 with Jarrett, Holder, Pelosi, Reid, and therest of his cast


18 posted on 07/29/2013 3:27:14 AM PDT by jsanders2001
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To: Fai Mao

Put the blame where it belongs, on the race hustlers who make efforts to divide this country.


19 posted on 07/29/2013 3:28:11 AM PDT by Biggirl (“Go, do not be afraid, and serve”-Pope Francis)
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To: jsanders2001

^ my bad. Not enough coffee in the veins yet...


20 posted on 07/29/2013 3:28:28 AM PDT by jsanders2001
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